Milton Keynes, a town north of London, has announced that it will be deploying 100 driverless pods (officially known as ULTra PRT transport pods) as a public transportation system. A similar system has been running for two years at Heathrow airport. The plan is to have the system up and running by 2015, with a full rollout by 2017. The move marks the first time that self-driving vehicles will be allowed to run on public roads in that country.

The pods look like very small metro rail cars, with sliding doors for exit and entry. Passengers can call (and pay £2 per trip) for a pod using their smartphone. The pods travel using rubber wheels on a special roadway, not a track, between curbs that help in guidance. Each pod is computer driven by independent onboard systems, though humans (passengers) can take over if there is a problem. Each can hold up to two people and their luggage and travels just 12mph. Plans call for the pods to carry passengers between the downtown area, the business district and the train station.

I welcome the advance, but I think “the move marks the first time that self-driving vehicles will be allowed to run on public roads in that country” and “the pods travel using rubber wheels on a special roadway, not a track, between curbs that help in guidance” are a little bit at odds.

£1 discount on the ride if you empty out the dustbin before you get in.
Unmentioned weakness of the system: susceptible to complete shutdown if anyone leaves a rug with a long fringe on the “special roadway”.

It used to be that futurists imagined a world where technology made life more exciting. Today, futurists imagine a world where technology makes us more like North Korea. The cars are already ugly and drab, may as well take what little fun in having them out as well. Perhaps the next great innovation will be to make the seats really uncomfortable so you don’t spend too much time “driving.”

The main difference is that people today do not respond enthusiastically to new technological advances.

The default response is not, as it used to be – “What will those scientists/inventors come up with next?”

Today, the knee-jerk response to dismiss the new technology, to say that it’s already been done, that it’s not practical, that it raises serious liability issues, that it might not be 100% safe, that it will make life too easy and boring, etc.

This mindset appears to transcend the political spectrum. Only some libertarians and people in Silicon Valley seem to have the old optimistic pro-tech mindset.

Z, the younger generation mostly doesn’t see cars as very exciting. They (we) seem them as a means to get from point a to point b, in an often tedious fashion. If a computer can drive instead, not only would this be much safer than dealing with problems like drunk driving or fatigue on long drives, but it would free up time to do something else more exciting (or more productive at least) than navigating highways and city streets on the commute to work.

I’d say this qualifies as exciting, it’s just that it’s less about the car itself than what it allows people to do instead of having to pay attention to something which is often really boring.

I did not consider that angle. The self-driving care will allow the youth to get more time in on Twitter and Instagram. The phrase, “no one can replace you” comes to mind for some reason. We are inventing robots to all of these tasks as we amuse ourselves to death.

So insightful. Not enjoying car ownership enough is *exactly* like North Korea. Have you already written a blog post about kids these days and how it’s their fault that your list of activities more fun than driving is limited to using Twitter and using Instagram?

The thing about the Laundry novels from Strauss is that they are rooted in pastiches of various spy fiction authors.

We’ve done Len Deighton, Ian Fleming (James Bond)– what if Thunderball turns out to be a real live Cthulu monster?, Antony Price, Modesty Blaise (for my reckoning, that was by far the creepiest- -when he pulls the Fimbulwinter down on Denver and there is no way out of town…)…

also the sense of humour about bureaucratic politics is very modern Brit– same sort of thing you get in ‘Level 34’.

It is a city which fascinates urban planners. The parallel grid system (borrowed *back* from North America) and the roundabouts mean it has minimum traffic congestion compared to most English towns. It’s also the most car dependent city in the UK.

It is the most successful new town of the 1960s new towns. People like living there. It has the youngest population in England, on average. It has a very low rate of unemployment– employers are attracted to it, the workforce and ease of access etc. It has relatively good rail links.

The best American example I can think of might be Irvine California. Or Columbia Maryland perhaps.